White Knight For Distressed Arts Center

A Take-charge, Controversial Chairman Has Big Plans For The 20-year-old Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts.

September 1, 1991|By Anne Groer, Sentinel Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts turns 20 next Sunday.

But don't look for a grand gala like the one in 1971 that opened the national monument to culture and the slain president - an edifice that was 29 months behind schedule and $21 million over budget.

Instead, the big blowout will come in 1996 to mark a quarter century of music, dance, theater and film at the center credited with turning Washington from a cultural backwater into a world capital of performing arts.

The decision to downplay the 20th birthday is understandable.

Since he took the job in April of 1990, Kennedy Center chairman James Wolfensohn has tried mightily to reverse a slide that left the center debt-ridden and dilapidated for much of its life.

Three weeks after it opened, souvenir-mad tourists had stolen props, posters, plants and virtually every chandelier crystal within reach. They even cut up pieces of velvet stage curtains and unscrewed bathroom spigots to take home.

Compounding those problems was Congress' continuing refusal to provide either $30 million in fix-up funds or $15 million to erase the deficit of a facility some lawmakers considered elitist.

Enter Wolfensohn, the hard-charging, Australian-born financier who took control 18 months ago after calling the center ''bankrupt and falling apart'' and ''little more than a rental hall'' for visiting artistic companies.

In the intervening year and a half, Wolfensohn has been hailed in Washington cultural circles as the ''white knight'' whose vision, charm, wealth and powerful friends seem to have rescued the distressed performing arts center.

Working with well-heeled, well-connected trustees and directors, he has already persuaded Congress to retire all but $2.5 million of the debt and approve another $29 million for repairs and maintenance by late 1992.

To be sure, there has been grumbling - most of it anonymous quotes to local newspapers and magazines by some of the center's old guard, who consider Wolfensohn too imperious and impatient.

There also has been criticism from arts patrons and professionals who say Wolfensohn may be trading high culture for more pop or populist fare.

Fiscal, physical and management matters aside, however, the ''Ken Cen,'' as locals fondly call it, remains one of Washington's most enduring and endearing attractions.

Situated on the Potomac River near historic Georgetown, it draws 3.5 million visitors a year from around the world.

They come to see the enormous sculpted head of John Fitzgerald Kennedy; the tapestries, chandeliers and paintings donated by foreign governments; the cavernous, flag-draped Hall of States and Hall of Nations; and the stunning views of the city from rooftop restaurants and balconies.

But fewer than one in 10 tourists buys a ticket to performances that have ranged from sold-out blockbusters like The Phantom of the Opera and the American Ballet Theater to bombs like the musicals Annie II and Shogun.

Wolfensohn - who still commutes from New York, where he runs his banking empire and formerly ran Carnegie Hall - wants to change the center's image from an inaccessible, elitist preserve to a more egalitarian performance space with racially and ethnically mixed artists and audiences.

''For its 19 1/2-year history you had a temple on the hill for the wealthy middle class. It can't be that insular. There is movement. You do see minority people now,'' he said, choosing his words carefully during a recent interview.

''It has got to be more customer-friendly. There are new signs here. You can now get a sandwich and a drink from carts. You can say that's gimmicky but it isn't, you know. It gets to the core of what makes the place more accessible,'' Wolfensohn said.

''We are improving our program of subsidized tickets for students, and looking at ways to break up the subscription series. We've got a new program of new works, five appearances for $49, which were sold out in about one hour,'' he added. ''But you can't change it in five minutes when you are running a $16 million deficit.''

The Kennedy Center was conceived by Congress in 1958 as a self-sustaining, privately funded monument of culture for the nation and the nation's capital.

Indeed, before it opened, performers often had to choose between appearing in a drafty inner-city ice rink or the then-segregated Daughters of the American Revolution convention hall.

Its arrival not only gave Washington cultural prestige but helped lure new restaurants and hotels to a sleepy downtown.

Congress donated the riverfront land and put up $43 million in direct appropriations and repayable bonds to cover construction. In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson decreed that it be named for the fallen Kennedy.